Winter Wonderland

We learned a few things this weekend. Sullivan County is a winter fairy tale when it snows. The lake house is a slice of winter heaven. And all-wheel drive is no match for several inches of snow and a really steep driveway. That's how we met our friend, the nice man with the winch!

The ride to the lake house:





Our slice of winter heaven:

Inwood in the Snow

So, I'm supposed to be locked up working on my Assessment I final, but how could I be expected to resist the first real snow of the season? Slogging through the snow with 8 months of baby attached to the front of me was an interesting experience, but I still came back with a smile on my face.

If you want to know why we live in the boonies of northern Manhattan, all you have to do is look at the pictures.

Inwood Park in the snow....






The local church's tree in the snow...



And of course, our annual holiday wonderland, Grandpa's Pizza....

Sonogram fever

Okay, finally got un-lazy enough to scan the sonograms and figgered they better get posted before laziness returns.

At 32 weeks, when the post about the joys of Inwood in the fall went up, there was yet another doctor's appointment. The usual routine went down - scales, tummy measurement, pictures. Benedict is turning out to be a healthy little monster and big if the belly is any way to judge things.

The boy's profile seems to be improving on the chin front.



The doctor assures me that this is a foot and the white circle in the middle is a big toe.



The routine was repeated at the 34 weeks and we were presented with pictures the umbilical cord in cross-section and a segment of spine. I'll let you decide which is which.





The next photo session is on December 23rd. We'll be at 36 weeks and hopefully still have the full 4 more to go. The cousin who got knocked up two weeks before we did went into labor this morning - 3 weeks before her due date. So Benedict had best not take any hints from his cousin. We're not ready for an early arrival.

Almost Done

Poor Shervyn's been stuck building furniture the last two weekends, and below is the almost end result. All that's left is the crib mattress, some sheets, the blinds, and a carpet. Well, that sounds like there's more work to do than we expected. But it's looking pretty good.






There are sonograms too, but we've been too lazy to scan them.

32 weeks and counting

We have officially reached the third trimester. This is a very scary thought. Sometime between the next 4 to 8 weeks (approximately), Shervyn and I will become parents. And word is that the hospital will actually let us take him home! They're not even going to check us for basic competence or a license or something. Which is probably a good thing as neither of us has ever changed a diaper.

Mostly we try to ignore the incoming reality. Which hasn't been so hard because Inwood is gorgeous in the fall, especially all our ginko trees.




We've also been avoiding reality by carving pumpkins and finally finishing off our move into the apartment. All we have left to do is hang up a few more pictures, find some blinds for the living room, and paint. The painting will happen slowly of the next couple of months. But soon our sunny apartment will look like two adults live it in. Ha! Like we're real adults.




The one real problem with this flurry of nesting activity, is that it forced us to realize that while there are plenty of comfy spaces for Gabby,



there isn't anywhere for the baby yet. This is what the nursery looked like until Monday




As of Monday, this is what the nursery looked like



One wall, 25% of the trim, and the ceiling left to paint. Then all we have to do is bribe our friends with food and wine to assemble the bookshelf, the dresser, and the crib. We'll be pretty much finished in about 2 weeks. And if the kid has the bad taste to arrive sooner than that, he'll just have to sleep in a drawer for the first few weeks.

Shameless Plug

We have been very lazy bloggers the past few months. Bad bloggers, bad!

Those of you who follow the news will know that life has been, err, exciting for Shervyn the past several weeks. And I just started my PhD program - they actually expect me to work! - and have been swamped. But here we are finally sharing pictures of the alien critter as he grows and makes me expand.

As of August, the baby's alien nature was still visible in the sonograms. Look at that face. I've got a Grey growing in me.



This was my second trimester, so we were on the once every 4 weeks visitation schedule. We didn't get to see the little alien for four more weeks. However, come September, it was time for the level 2. This is basically a super intense sonogram that makes sure that everything is developing normally. There were lots of pictures. Got to say, I'm not so sure why they hand these things out like candy. The images are a little disturbing. I don't want to know that my baby is freaky looking.



Notice the big ol' mouth on the baby. Clearly he's going to like eating and talking. Just like Mommy and Daddy. Is he smiling in the first picture?




This month we had our last second trimester appointment with the doctor. From here on out it's every two weeks again. Ahhh, the joys of peeing in a cup on a regular basis! He is rearranging my insides to his liking and making sure that he's got plenty of room. It looks like I swallowed a whole watermelon. He's also getting very active. As usual, they took lots of pictures. The doctor assures me this is a picture of his head.



The little beastie is floating head down these days. So while my bladder isn't getting too much abuse, my rib cage is. Here is a picture of what makes my tummy wiggle like a special effect out of Aliens.



Let me tell you, the kid's got a mean kick on him! I'm intimately acquainted with that foot these days.

So while the baby keeping to schedule, growing bigger, and getting more active, his parents are far behind. We haven't painted the nursery; we haven't put the crib together; we haven't picked a pediatrician. Poor little guy, he's going to be the most prepared person in this family!

Although we haven't done anything important, we did manage to complete our registries! See, we're not totally useless. Most of the stuff is at Babies R' Us. We did the best we could, but we're newbies. Hopefully we registered for all the stuff we'll actually need. Sadly they don't carry the baby carrier we want so we had to go to that company's Web site as well. Finally, we decided that maybe a reference library would be needed. You are talking about two first-timers at work here who have no idea what they're doing! So we registered at Amazon for some basic baby care and breast feeding books. Yes, I know it looks like we're getting greedy, but someone's got to make sure the kid makes it through in one piece and we're not going to be able to do it without instructions.

We've another appointment next week, so we'll have more pictures to share. If only they'd stop giving me pictures of his boy bits. It just seems a little inappropriate to post those.

The Alien In Me

You think I'm joking? Look at this sonogram from 12 weeks. It seriously looks like a prop from an episode of The X-Files. The kid looks human from the side (see the image immediately below), but from the front it is clearly not of human origin. And look at that creepy, bony arm. This is clearly not the product of two well fed (human) individuals such as Shervyn and me.



At 14 weeks, we learned that we were giving birth to the hyper active spawn of Skeletor. In 1 minute 7 seconds the kid did a total flip from laying on its back, to floating face down in the womb. And note that once again the kid looks human-ish in the nice side view. I promise that the blob on the right side is the head and the blob in the middle/left side is the body. But in the second picture you can clearly see the skull, spine, and ribs.




Creepy I tell you, seriously creepy.

It Begins

Well, it's begun. The cumbersome process of figuring out what you need and how much you can afford to spend. Buy a breast pump? Rent a breast pump? Will I even need a breast pump? Glass bottles? Plastic bottles? Both? Swing or bouncy chair? Do we get duplicates because of the lake house or does the kid deal with only having a swing at the apartment? Gates, drawer and cabinet locks, toilet locks? Sure, some of this stuff we don't need to worry about until after the kid is mobile. But if any of the stories of Shervyn as a kiddle are true, I fully expect to find an 18-month-old spawn standing on top of the crib laughing its head off. Or trying to swim in the toilet. Or trying to take the wall sockets apart. Yikes. Let's just focus on how to survive the first couple of weeks, shall we?

Our trip to Babies R Us was both overwhelming and comforting. Shervyn realized that an $999 Bugaboo stroller really wasn't necessary and that a 13 lb Maclaren umbrella stroller is a good thing. I had a hard time not getting distracted by the things with music, vibrations, spins, etc. Oh and the library we have to set up. Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Good Night Moon... So much good stuff.

We eventually buckled down and started looking at cribs. The ones above are listed in order from least to most favorite. Most cribs are pretty ugly. And the quality and price of the other nursery furniture is ridiculous. We'll buy a crib from a baby place and then Ikea the rest of the furniture probably. An Ikea dresser is about half the cost of a "baby" dresser and the quality is actually better. Now on to all the other scary stuff we've got to get done.

As Shervyn promised, here are some more shots of the house. It looks much bigger from the outside than it actually is. And the garage is useless for his poor car; the driveway is so steep it threatens to rip the bottom of his car off when he attempts to get into the garage. But we do have a big porch with a loverly gazebo. Which I'll never actually sit in because I'm sure there's spiders in there. The lake is restful and, rumor has it, full of fish. Shervyn may turn into a bass fisherman in his free time. And finally, Gabby doesn't seem to mind the ride on down to the house much at all. Doesn't she look elegant in her purple (much-hated) harness. From the peaceful expression on her face in this picture you'd never think that putting her in the damn thing led to a melt down worthy of the crankiest of 4 (or 34) year olds.